One of the Largest Immersive Art Museums in China, + Nightclub x Nightlife
The Silos opened in Shekou, Shenzhen in June 2022: a $4 million immersive art and nightlife venue carved out of a decommissioned industrial relic, with work from nearly 60 artists around the world. I developed the creative treatment and led the delivery, building out the concept and project as the L&A Design team supported a delivery in seven months across a team spanning China, the United States, and Europe.
Two worlds, fused: the mega-club and the digital museum.
The treatment I developed for The Silos set out to fuse two things that usually live apart: the energy of a Western mega-club, in the spirit of rooms like Hakkasan and Omnia, and the immersive scale of a digital art museum like Culturespaces in Paris and Two Bit Circus. One line held it together: the Next Generation Experience.
A museum by day and a nightlife venue by night, leaning into deep reds and blues, red for passion and good fortune, blue for imagination and freedom, with holographic performers, augmented-reality layers, projection across every surface, and a sensory walk that changed each time you came back. That was the vision the treatment had to sell, and then the production had to build.
It started as a row of decommissioned industrial silos.
The site was a cluster of industrial silos on the Shekou waterfront, raw concrete and steel with nothing inside. Everything in the finished venue had to be engineered into that shell, on a seven-month clock.
An industrial relic, reimagined as an immersive art museum.
The Silos turned a cluster of decommissioned industrial silos in Shekou, Shenzhen into one of the largest immersive art museums in the country, paired with a nightlife venue. Nearly 60 artists from around the world filled the raw concrete volumes with projection, virtual and augmented reality, and holographic work, each silo and floor holding a different world. A line from Einstein runs along one of the walls: "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
By day it read as an immersive art museum. By night the same volumes turned into an events and nightlife venue, with the working container port of Shekou glowing through the windows.
Nearly sixty artists, one building.
Liquid-chrome domes, a face suspended in fog, a forest of giant mushrooms, mandalas spun across the curved silo walls, classical murals remixed in projection, interactive wings that moved with whoever stood in front of them. A walk through The Silos moved from one fully realized environment to the next.
Raw concrete, the harbor in the glass.
The build kept the bones of the original structure intact, the industrial shell left visible, with Shekou's working container terminal framed in the windows as part of the experience.
Concept to opening in seven months.
From an empty industrial structure to a finished, public venue in seven months. I set the original budget and built out the concept and early production with the team, then continued as a consulting producer while the L&A Design team in China carried the build through to opening night.
Named a China Cultural Tourism Pioneer.
The Silos was named a China Cultural Tourism Pioneer at the China Cultural Tourism New Marketing Summit in March 2023, and won multiple awards for design and innovation on opening. It was widely covered in the press as a first of its kind in the country.
